Baseball Atrocity

Written by Matt Peace, Reporter

I was lying on my couch relaxing and watching television when some free agent baseball signing popped up on the screen. I was about to glance over to my dad and ask him something like, “What do you think of that move?” but before I could finish, my dad interrupted me by saying, “I’m going to have a hard time enjoying baseball this season if the Yankees are just going to win again.” This statement coming from my dad totally shocked me because he is the biggest sports fan that I have ever met. He knows so much about the history of the four major sports (Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Hockey). He just loves sports. But then I took a step back, and being the huge sports fan that I am, I agreed with him. The Yankees are the clear favorites to win the World Series because of their huge payroll. And their payroll is ruining baseball.

            For those of you who don’t know what a payroll is, it is the money that a team has to spend on players. The New York Yankees 2009 payroll was a whopping $201,449,289, with the average player making $7,748,050. They have the highest payroll in baseball. Their payroll is more than 65 million dollars higher than the second place New York Mets. On the bottom end of the payroll scale is the Florida Marlins, whose 2009 payroll was $36,814,000 with the average player making $1,314,786. So the payroll difference between the Yankees and the Marlins is around $165 million, and the average Yankee makes about $6 million more than the average Marlin. How is this fair? I’ll take you back to the winter of 2008-2009, when the Yankees signed C.C. Sabathia who will be making around $15 million every year. Mark Teixara signed and will be making around $20 million a year. A.J. Burnett signed and will be making around $16 million a year. Alex Rodriguez, also a Yankee, also makes $33 million a year. Rodriguez would swallow up around 11/12 of the Marlins payroll. And it’s just not the Marlins. 17 teams could not afford those players with their whole payroll, and 5 or 6 teams could sign all of them, but they couldn’t field a team because they wouldn’t be able to sign anyone else. So 22-23 teams couldn’t even be in the same ballpark in terms of spending as the Yankees!

            You also have to look at the fact that the Yankees made so many mistakes with their money, like throwing tons of money at Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, and Gary Sheffield in the middle of the 2000’s. No other teams could afford to whiff on three players like that. But because of their insanely high payroll, mistakes are just little bumps in the road. These moves might have showed the fact that the Yankees could spend poorly and not win the World Series. But still, they were spending horribly and still made the playoffs every year of the 2000’s except for 2008.

            In closing, if you like baseball, don’t be surprised to see your favorite team bowing to the overspending Yankees once again.